{"id":869663,"date":"2026-10-03T18:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T18:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869663\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T18:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T18:44:13","slug":"celtic-dermot-desmond-targeted-by-fan-protest-at-alfred-dunhill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/869663\/","title":{"rendered":"Celtic: Dermot Desmond targeted by fan protest at Alfred Dunhill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celtic’s largest shareholder Dermot Desmond was targeted in a protest at the Alfred Dunhill Links golf tournament in St Andrews as tennis balls were thrown towards him. <\/p>\n

Tennis balls with pictures of the 76-year-old’s face scored out were thrown on to the green of the 15th hole of the pro-am competition, with images showing Desmond having to be escorted off the course by security. <\/p>\n

The Celtic Fans Collective have since released a statement, along with footage and images of the incident. <\/p>\n

It read: “Dermot Desmond has essentially been allowed to run Celtic Football Club whilst using his wealth to hide from supporters and accountability. Fans took the chance today to send a message that this arrangement cannot continue.”<\/p>\n

Desmond is the largest individual shareholder of the Scottish Premiership club but has been criticised in recent seasons for the club’s lack of progress in Europe and underwhelming transfer business. <\/p>\n

In the wake of Brendan Rodgers’ resignation at the beginning of last season, Desmond blamed the former manager<\/a> for much of the problems that marred the beginning of the 2025-26 campaign. <\/p>\n

Then at Celtic’s annual general meeting last November, which had to be abandoned due to fan unrest<\/a>, Desmond’s son Ross read out a statement on his behalf. <\/p>\n

He began by defending his father, a “lifelong and passionate” Celtic supporter, and vowed that the board would not be “bullied by aggressive and irrational” criticism.<\/p>\n

The Irishman defended then chairman Peter Lawwell and chief executive Michael Nicholson, claiming attempts to “dehumanise and vilify them are shameful”.<\/p>\n

Desmond went on to criticise a section of fans over a recent incident that led to the Green Brigade ultras group being banned and added: “Those people are bullies.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celtic’s largest shareholder Dermot Desmond was targeted in a protest at the Alfred Dunhill Links golf tournament in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-869663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}